For a young student just starting out, which of the top three is the best choice?

[sanantone]

The moral of the story is to seek out the most stringent requirements as far as the type and quality of course requirement, and that will also satisfy the easy breezy states that take anything claiming college-level. From there, make sure the specific course mix required by the state that will be tested in, and that will minimize the risk of wasted credits if an out-of-state move is ever required and the new state's transfer requirements are not met. While standardization is not in force now, it's been discussed; one never knows what the future holds.

As I said, I used Alabama as an example because it is one of the few that I've researched in detail. For someone just starting out who intends to make accounting their full-time career, a bit of preplanning to keep options open doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. Do any of us truly know where we'll be in ten years? Twenty? Thirty? If asked just 15 years ago, I'd have laughed hysterically if someone told me I'd be living in Alabama of all places. My husband and I are actively considering a move out of state, and since we're doing a national search, who knows where we'll end up. If my dream job hinged on my CPA license being transferable, it would be a bummer if that were out of reach because I saved two weeks and $50 on a shortcut class instead of taking a self-paced RA version. Like I said, though, that's my take; I tend to be a cautious planner. To each their own.

I understand what you're saying, but it might not be as simple as meeting the most stringent requirements. Those stringent requirements could be very different from the requirements in the easier states causing you to take an unreasonable amount of additional credits just to meet your own state's requirements and another state's requirements. When you move to a tertiary state that is not even that strict, you still may have to take even more credits. For example, you could meet your state's requirements and what you think is the strictest state's requirements, but when you move to Texas, you're going have to spend a semester taking 15 credits of face-to-face courses. This might make it sound like Texas has the toughest standards, but they're actually pretty flexible when it comes to subject matter. All they specifically require is accounting or tax research and ethics. The 30 UL credits in accounting can be in just about anything. I guess what I'm saying is that there probably is no toughest state that will meet all of the requirements in every state.

I don't know if this is true, but I've read that the CPA license is rather easy to transfer without having to meet the new state's specific requirements in most cases. There are actually many people who earned their license out-of-state in Colorado because they used to only require 120 credits and no work experience.